graverobber

Today's
Nice Price or Crack Pipe candidate is a mythical beast, a Mercury Sable wagon that was long ago SHO-ified. You know you want it, but for five thousand bucks, you'll have to decide if the SHO must go on.

Why can't you people make things easy for me? Case in point, yesterday's
cut-top 2000 Cherokee was neck and neck all freakin' day. Do you know how hard it is to write these things weeks in advance when shit like that happens? Thankfully, the dust finally did settle, with the Jeep landing an RCH-close 51% Nice Price win. For some inexplicable reason, I don't think today's candidate will end up in quite so close a nail-biter.

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I remember when Ford debuted the Taurus/Sable cars. The Taurus was pretty far out there, what with its aero shape and grille-less façade. The Sable on the other hand, looked like it had just rolled out of a time machine from some wonderful future where all cars were amazing. I mean it didn't just have headlights, its whole front end was headlights! Its wrap-around windows made the roof look like it was floating in air. For the era, it was truly jaw dropping.

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The Sable wagon may have shared its shape with that of the Taurus longroof, but the bodywork for both was wild enough that it didn't matter. What did matter was that the Sable's engines never quite caught up with its futuristic looks. As of today, they finally have.

This
1987 Sable wagon appears to be a reasonable example of a car that once looked like it was from the future. Now that we're in that future, it still looks pretty good. If course you wouldn't think much of the Sable's stock Vulcan V6, as while it was a solid citizen, that pushrod mill really didn't bring the ponies to the party. The stock 4-speed auto box (2.5-litre fours got a 3-speed) was a bit of pee in the punchbowl as well.

What makes this one different however isn't just the Slicers holding up the white over grey bar of soap body, but the SHO drivetrain that lives underneath that futuristic shape. The seller says that for the first three years of its life, this Sable was a Vulcan/auto family hauler. Then, with 60K on the clock, all that dullness was yanked out, along with the front seats, dash and center console, and replaced with bits from a wrecked 1989 Taurus SHO.

That means a nest of snakes producing 220-bhp under the hood, and a kind of weak sauce Mazda-sourced 5-speed manual transmission with which to put those ponies down. This car also benefits from upgraded Mustang front brakes, SHO rear clampers, and aftermarket springs/struts to help keep them all in line. There's also a bunch of extra parts that come with the car, so it's a good thing it's a wagon.

The seller seems to be a fan of the SHO, claiming to have another in his stable, and is selling this because he can't fit his modern baby seat, as well as his 6-food frame into the car at the same time.

What he can do is give a pretty good rundown of the cars pros and cons and it seems that while it does have some visually significant foibles - that driver's seat is pretty grody - none of them should be deal killers.

The deal that they are likely unable to kill is $5,000 for this chimeric beast. I can say with certainty that you'll be hard pressed to find another car like this, and building one yourself would probably run more than the asking. What you need to do is decide, based on the ad's description and the cars' balls-deep coolness, is to decide if five-large is a fair price.

What do you think, is this SHO-able worth $5,000? Or, is that a price that won't have you SHO-ing the money?